ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an informal overview of Zeno, a mediating system for supporting discussion, argumentation and decision making in groups, which explicitly takes these considerations into account. The field of computational dialectics has its analytic, empirical, and normative aspects. Presumably, research in computational dialectics would be more productive if the people interested in this subject would begin to form a research community. As a first step in this direction, organized, together with Ronald Loui, a workshop on computational dialectics for the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The thesis of the Zeno project, which represents only one position in the field of computational dialectics, is that rationality can best be understood as a theory construction process regulated by discourse norms. The purpose of the Zeno system is to provide a practical tool for implementing systems which mediate actual discussions between persons.
